On Sunday we rode up from Beaver Dam to Ripon, a town Roger and I had stopped in two years ago – though it is better known for its claim to being the birthplace of the Republican Party as well as the site of Ripon College. I remembered it as kind of a charming little town with a clutch of interesting old buildings, but two years ago I did not bother to seek out the famed Little White Schoolhouse, where local notables among the Whig, Democratic and Free Soil parties met to discuss and agree upon forming a new party in response to Senate passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854.

For a modest $2 fee, Rachael and I toured the tiny schoolhouse and learned of its history from a local docent.

And so, as we were looking at old photographs of the meeting’s attendees, I came face to face with this (pardon the repetition):

Brian, the docent, informed us that it was unclear whether the photograph was of Alonzo Loper or his father, Amos, but I quite think good Brian was missing the freaking point – was a Loper involved in founding the Republican Party? Could I be related to him?!? Is this why my parents “know” so little of our family history?

Reeling from this revelation, there was only one thing to do. After having a beer at a local tavern with a delightful, friendly couple, Tom and Kim, we sought out the Long House.

Before there was Ripon, the Little White Schoolhouse and the Republican Party, there was Ceresco, a phalanstery modeled upon the teachings of Utopian Socialist Charles Fourier. Named in honor of Ceres, the agricultural commune held property in common and shared the fruits of their labor. I did not ask Brian whether Ceresco’s members also practiced the free love sharing of bodies as recommended by the good Frenchman.
So Ripon had a fascinating early history (for the record, the residents of Ceresco voluntarily disbanded in part because one of its leading members became so involved in establishing the Republican Party), which is a good reminder of the political ferment this part of the country has long been known for.
My political equilibrium reestablished, we set off back to the motel, which was once again off in the outskirts of the old downtown, which would have been a much nicer place to stay as it looks like this:


Since it was on the way back to the motel and the supper club we were going to go to, we finally took Lisa’s advice and stopped in at Culvers for some frozen custard (flavor of the day – chocolate Heath chunk [or something like that]). Naturally we went through the drive thru:

While the custard was quite tasty, the cardiology office next door was a none-too-subliminal heartful caution:

Later that evening, we went to a Wisconsin supper club, thereby completing our fish fry-brat-frozen custard-supper club gastro tour of Wisconsin.

And with several failed attempts to get a decent shot of Sunday’s Super Moon, the third day of our ride came to an end.

Strictly considered from a road surface-shoulder quality-traffic density perspective, Wisconsin’s county road system (bewildering as its orthographic labeling is) nicely complements the state’s bike trails and makes for a peerless overall network. Throw in the general flatness and gentle hills amid dairy farms and corn fields and you have a Rockwellian vision of what an urban person thinks the countryside looks like.

We started our day by feasting on the “Fat Boy” (TM?) Michigan blueberries we got at Brennan’s.

Though at one point we were swarmed by an angry buzz of climate-changing cyclists, for the most part the roads looked like this:


At our first stop of the day, we met Raleigh:

whose owner, Dan, somewhat ruefully admitted that his wife had named their dog after the North Carolina city rather than his preference, the pitcher Rollie Fingers.

Dan also told us that the cream-colored brick in abundance around us is locally known as Watertown brick (after the nearby town). Evidently the high lime and sulfur content of the clay partially accounts for its color.



After more roads like this:

with the occasional milk truck for company:

we got into Juneau, a short nine miles from our day’s destination. Much of the town was engaged in a vast recycling project called a rummage sale. I’m not sure how the town divided up the roles but seemingly half the populace had gently used items on display for the other half (as well as day trippers from around the area). But being on bikes, this was the sign that caught our attention:

Clearly, there was only one thing to do:

We ended up spending a delightful half hour or so chatting with some very friendly and welcoming locals. It’s a big part of what I like about the whole self-supported multi-day bike ride thing. As fractious as our country is, which I don’t necessarily think is a bad thing – people strongly disagree about things that are important to them – though clearly we’re heading for an historical shakeout/realignment, it’s still a good thing to be able to drop in on strangers and share a meal and some conversation. So thanks Lisa – we enjoyed talking with you and though we did not end up going to Culvers in Beaver Dam (see below), we did have some wonderful frozen custard in Ripon the next day.

The odds are good that I will do an insightful post/crazy rant about the economic logistics of credit card touring through small towns but for now these contrasting photos will have to do. We rolled up into Beaver Dam on the west side, where we saw this:


But that is not the part of town where we stayed; instead we were at the ass end of Beaver Dam, which looks like this:

and the local store sells this:

My country tis of thee.

Years ago I worked for a good-government nonprofit and racked up a number of frequent flier miles while working on a project to amend St. Louis’ city charter. Those miles, with their attendant promise of a free trip to Europe, were the most tangible outcome of the reform effort. Despite biennial trips on American Airlines to preserve this banked holiday, the opportunity to travel abroad never arrived and the airline increased the minimum miles beyond my reach. So when my mother suffered a mild stroke, I had the bittersweet wherewithal to fly to Cincinnati to see her.

In the years I’ve lived in DC, the separation of the nation’s capital from “America’s Heartland” has, at least west of the river, come to resemble the traditional bicoastal disdain for the flyover country. Before bipartisanship reinvented government as a spoils system for an incestuous consulting class, civic nerds outnumbered the cynical opportunists drawn to profit in DC. But from the War on Terror to the Great Recession, Washington has been remade into an imperial citadel. A barony of government contractors has grown fat off the public fisc, and the capital is now ringed by the three wealthiest counties in the country.

Declining crime rates, improved government services and a more diversified local economy have precipitated a white flight into DC neighborhoods long left to the urban poor. Dog parks, bike lanes and boutique restaurants have morphed from amenities to entitlements. Never has the heartland view of DC as a warren of out-of-touch elitists been so accurate, which a trip into the hinterlands where recession still lingers amply confirms. As the country and its capital have drifted further apart, a sojourn among the unfortunates now affords the kind of self discovery that is more commonly associated with foreign travel – as my flight to Cincinnati would reveal. 

It’s been awhile since I’ve flown back to see my parents so I was surprised to discover just how much of a flying jitney service mid-market air travel has become. Travelers from DC to Cincinnati (on US Airways) no longer warrant a jetway onto the plane but must troop onto a bus that is held until the last straggling passenger has come aboard before making an agonizingly slow passage across the tarmac to where the diminutive jet awaits. Knowing how cramped and confined the plane would be, I warily scanned my fellow bus exiles – on the lookout for the overly large or the piercingly shrill. And sure enough, among the last on the bus, came a Gorgon and her brood, headed, in all likelihood, back to their Appalachian homeland.

I dared not take a good look at her, but she was an unkempt mass of immensity. She was not sloppy or obese but had the sturdy dull-faced mien of a peasant astray from a Brueghel painting. While cradling an infant, she corralled an unheeding child engaged with his Game Boy as we all trooped off the bus. Once upon the plane, to my delight, the trio shambled down the aisle past my row and its open seats. But just as I was beginning to revel in my unexpected isolation, a commotion advanced from the rear and settled itself opposite me in the once-vacant row.

Prepared to make the best of it, I settled in with ear plugs and a Scandinavian crime novel as the newborn tooled up to match the whine of the jet engines. Once at cruising altitude, I became vaguely aware of a sing-songy susurration across the aisle that turned out to be a one-sided colloquy concerning the pangs of hunger. In retrospect, I should have anticipated what was to happen next but I have only been responsible for dogs and have never cared for an infant.

Curious about the solicitous conversation I was eavesdropping upon, I looked over to what cannot be unseen. Where once there was mother and infant, there now appeared a conjoined tit-head baby. The newborn’s smooth bald dome was perfectly matched by the pale orb to which it was attached. There was no discreet drapery; this was a mother and child reunion proud and out loud. The words of encouragement I seem to have heard are happily lost to me now. But the spectacle, in a confined space from which I could not simply walk away, held me captivated.

I do not think I am too different from many of the men in my demographic when it comes to public nursing. With all the bullshit we spin about motherhood, discomfort about breastfeeding in public is asinine. But I don’t want to see it, and I know that is on me.

So from time to time, I looked over – not staring or intrusive but fascinated. What repelled? There is no need for amateur Freudian histrionics though that is a long and winding path. As I sat there in seat 5A, sky borne with the hope of bringing some comfort to my mother, my disdain for this rude unsophisticate redounded upon me. For surely as she was with her child so too was my mother once with me.

I am not likely to leave the Imperial Citadel; life here is good though it is corrosive and the value of empathy should not be foresworn.

We were unable to schedule a session in the sensory deprivation tank on our last trip to Baltimore so doing so was high on our list for this past weekend. For those who do not remember the forgettable William Hurt film Altered States (written by Paddy Chayefsky), a sensory deprivation tank is an enclosed chamber containing an Epsom salt solution heated to body temperature that allows the subject to float in a completely dark and soundless environment. There appears to be some medical research that suggests floating in such a tank can, over time, alleviate anxiety, stress and depression. But the appeal for us was mostly curiosity – what is it like to float in the quiet dark, naked and alone?

Rachael had been invited to Baltimore to speak on a panel about how women can promote themselves in the legal environment. I had come up to renew an on-again, off-again flaneurship in the city of my birth. Since she was otherwise engaged, and the facility had only one tank, it was down to me to test the waters first. While walking is the preferred mode of transport for any flaneuring worthy of the description, taking the bus is also recommended, and that is how I got out to West Baltimore. Straight out of The Wire, this is what I stepped into.

There wasn’t much in the way of signage, but the address of the building was easy enough to spot.

Be Free Floating is run by a couple of artist-musicians out of Ann Arbor. His name is Twig, and hers is less mnemonically apt. They bought the building for cheap over a decade ago and live upstairs. While Twig has had a lifelong fascination with consciousness, the sensory deprivation tank is a recent addition to 2118 West Pratt St. Depending on how you furnished your first apartment, the space has a familiar-seeming, welcoming feel.

The tank is down the hall in another room. Twig ran through the process with me – shower before entering the tank, don’t touch your eyes once you’re in the water and shower afterward making sure to rinse out your ears. And with that, he set the timer and was gone. I was left to contemplate the rather odd-looking contraption and wonder why I had agreed to do this.

For those who want to skip ahead, the experience was a bit of a mixed bag. The session lasted an hour, and there were times when my interest flagged. Floating in the salt-slick silent dark, focused on the sound of my breathing yet unsettled by the clamoring of my heart, I imagined myself alone on a deep-space voyage adrift toward eternity. Lying perfectly still, cushioned by thick, heavy water seemingly between liquid and solid forms and with virtually no other sensory input, I let my awareness disappear and go blank. The phenomenologists regard intentionality as the fundamental property of consciousness, i.e., the apperceptions of consciousness are always about or of something. For some brief and recurrent periods in the sensory deprivation tank, I was elsewhere, which was only apparent when I had the distinct sensation of coming back to “normal consciousness.” I did not experience a union with the cosmos, I did not hallucinate, I did not see the face of god. But I was neither asleep nor aware. It was a very pleasant experience, and I wanted to return to it.

For a couple more times, I was able to do so. How long these periods lasted I have no way of knowing. The sense of time’s passage was very distorted – bereft of any external correlates, my awareness of time felt uneven and unsure. For the better part of the hour I was in the tank, I gently but unsuccessfully willed myself to reenter that mysterious vanishing state. Once I reconciled myself to the evident fact that this would not recur, I was left to float in the dark unsatisfied but not unhappy.

It is only recently that I have been able to find a way of staying awake through relating to and understanding opera. The epiphany occurred at Nationals Stadium while taking in Opera in the Outfield with a mild buzz on. Decades earlier in New York, the warhorses of the canon rode roughshod over me – I remember something about a dwarf with a magic ring, a hunchback with a beautiful daughter and an endless baffling warble about a rose knight that had myself and each of my two companions contentedly napping in shifts. But once I realized that it was all about the overwrought doings of  a humanoid-like race of Opera Beings, it began to make a certain kind of sense.

My mistake had been to think of opera as theater with music. As such, it was a poor kind of theater endlessly interrupted by vast stretches of song that advanced the plot at a glacial pace. But once you recognize that you are not dealing with the tales and woes of ordinary human beings but the travails and triumphs of a different and somewhat childlike species, you find that you can begin to understand them on their own terms.

This is what I’ve learned so far. While Opera Beings look like us, they tend to be quite a bit larger (though this difference is no longer so pronounced). They do not talk much, and they are governed by their passions and emotions. When disturbed or excited, they break into song and are capable of impressive tonal feats. They are not much for reason, deliberation or cooperation, and their favored modes of action are seduction, betrayal and deceit. They are impulsive and will heedlessly pursue a course of action without regard for its foreseeable consequences. The exaltation of suffering bewitches them, and they are often majestic in remorse.

This evening we venture to the Kennedy Center to learn more about these fabulous beings. It is an odd fact that their world may on occasion appear as a leitmotif of our own. Common tales that we are familiar with from books or the stage may sometimes be apprehended within the sonic landscape of the Opera Beings. Tonight we shall hear of the unfathomable doings of a great white whale and its implacable pursuer. Let us attend rapturously.

and ours may on occasion exhibit a surprising similarity. Common tales that we have read or seen on the stage sometimes appear in Opera World

Skeptics, naysayers and haters be admonished – fresh, homemade tofu is a revelatory, gustatory delight. Surpassing the difference between fresh and boxed pasta, freshly made tofu leaves its store-bought cousin at a distant remove and tastes somewhat like soy milk cheese, which makes sense since that is essentially how it is made. Tofu with actual flavor that you don’t need to enhance, boost, alter or camouflage – delicious! But don’t take my word for it –

“I never thought tofu could taste so good.” R. Donald

“Why have I never had this before? I’ll never eat meat again.” Lee Wilson

“Fresh tofu is the new bacon.” Bert D. Loper

“Start buying soybean futures – fresh tofu is a winner.” R. Lee

“One word: tofu.” Rachael Lee